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Friday, July 15, 2011

Local Global Dance

Young’un electronic up-comers are set to dish out hearing loss Saturday night. Zedd, Porter Robinson and headliner Skrillex announced the final stop of their Global Dance tour a few months back, so the day’s finally here for dub dudes and bass heads to do their thing in Royal Oak.

Having played together for a portion of the summer (all three rocked Electric Forest, Global Dance Colorado) and remixed each others tracks, they know each others' stuff. It’s genre bending for sonic cohesion in sold-out chaos. Not to say they’ll perform other than solo sets, just that the rise and fall and rise of the night should feel right.

The vibe is young and fresh, whether you’re into getting your brains melted at 25 Hz or not. All these guys are young but have experienced meteoric success. Porter Robinson is celebrating his 19th birthday today. Skrillex is 23. Zedd only started producing in 2009. Yet they all have reached Top 5 statuses on beatport.com at one point or another in the past two years and have worked with the likes of Lady Gaga, Deadmau5 and the Black Eyed Peas.

The scale at which “hard” electronic music has grown in the US, and to some extent fused into the mainstream, is remarkable. Neo-club kids have manifested; aggressive electro-house and dubstep spawning. The artists are their same age, the sounds are unashamed and new. Volume levels aren’t doctor-approved, and most concerts are saunas with lightshows. Not exactly the next generation of tacky 90’s warehouse ravers, dry-humping at 140 BPM, rather a seemingly more sincere group rejecting the rigid structure and clichés of the monotonous past — for now.

The music is free to explore and transcend traditional phrasing and genre parameters, proliferators of exotic melodies and effects. Hopefully it’s not too soon before this scene is over-exposed, over-saturated with wannabes and band-wagoners, and diluted by un-original approaches. Most everything eventually is.

Expect a big loud show Saturday at The Royal Oak Music Theater with lots of beatmashing, impromptu transitions and on-the-fly remixes. They’ll play their hits, along with throwbacks and cuts from other DJs, all of which will become a rich micro music fest experience. And while the music’s in, I fully intend to enjoy it.